Bad Monkey (30 page)

But that night, when Yancy disappeared under the water, sunk like an anvil, Nick had gotten a little anxious. Like, what if I didn’t hit him hard enough? What if the fucker woke up on the bottom and swam off into the mangroves?

Which, turns out, is exactly what happened. Yancy pulled himself
out of the canal, now sure that Caitlin’s story about Eve was true because obviously Eve had sent her new “boyfriend” after him. And what does Yancy do next? He turns up at Nick’s place on Duck Key, finds the hatchet and some bone fragments in a drain—this Yancy tells Caitlin, who immediately calls Eve, who in a cold panic calls her husband.

Now they’ve got another problem: how to retrieve Nick’s left arm from Nick’s grave before Yancy obtains a court order to exhume it. Because, with all the new CSI technology, a clever coroner could aim some type of super-ionized laser-imaging ray at the putrid limb and see that the amputation wasn’t accidental.

And then Eve would get arrested for murdering a spouse who wasn’t even dead.

So they end up paying two random shitbirds to dig up Stripling’s coffin and snatch his arm, a job Nick would have done himself except it would have taken all fucking night, a one-handed man trying to shovel packed dirt. But the grave robbers never show up at Denny’s, so Nick and Eve take off.

Dawn, they’re on the seaplane to Andros. That afternoon, Eve receives an urgent e-mail from the cemetery saying her husband’s gravesite has been “disturbed,” please call us right away. Luckily the cemetery people don’t find any incriminating clues, just a hole in the ground and a pried-open casket.

Which, the arm? Who knows what those sick bastards did with the goddamn thing after they dug it up. Long as it was gone, Stripling didn’t give a shit where. He had no attachment, emotional or otherwise.

Now his main concern—on top of this rotten weather—is the unexpected appearance in the Bahamas of Andrew Yancy, whom Nick is preparing to blast with the man’s own shotgun.

Actually, though, the timing for a body disposal is pretty convenient. People often disappear during hurricanes, just blow the fuck away.

“… I got no problem killing a goddamn roach inspector,” Nick is saying, intending for those to be the last mortal words Yancy ever hears.

Then Eve walks into the room.

“Hello there, Mrs. Stripling,” pipes Yancy. “Nice to see you again.”

“Don’t do it here,” she says sternly to her husband.

“Why not?”

“The mess is why. We’ll lose our security deposit.”

Stripling, barely able to contain himself. “Are you serious? So we buy ’em a new rug!”

“But meanwhile who has to clean it up? The only person in this household with two hands, that’s who. Me! So, no, Nicky, you take him outside to shoot him.”

Stripling is so fucking pissed off, he’s having trouble steadying the shotgun. He tells Eve to go downstairs and turn up the stereo full blast.

“Wait, she’s got a point,” Yancy interrupts. “Bloody entrails everywhere, then you’ve gotta drag the body out of the house, which tends to leave a forensic trail.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“It’s so windy outside, nobody would hear the gun go off. But you’re the boss, Nick.” Yancy shrugs. “Eve, where’s Rosa?”

“Don’t say one word,” Stripling snaps at his wife.

However, he sees the benefits of doing the murder outdoors, the hurricane rains washing away the splatter. So he rises from the Super Rollie and pokes Yancy down the steps, through the foyer, out the front door. He tells Eve to switch on the floodlights—thank God for the generator—and briskly he walks Yancy to the north side of the house, Eve joining them under a pair of coconut palms.

“This’ll work,” Stripling says.

Yancy looking more worried now, raindrops pelting his face.

From the shadows comes a high-pitched bark, like a squirrel, then Eve is saying, “Tillie, you bad girl, come here right now.”

Her spoiled runt of a dog, manically scooting between everybody’s ankles.

“Get her outta here!” says Nick.

Eve pleading: “Tillie, heel! Tillie, calm down!”

Then Yancy whistles once. Real simple, like a bobwhite quail.

And the retard mutt jumps into his arms.

“Nicky, wait!” Eve cries.

Yancy smiles, clutching the dog to his chest. “Shoot me, Nick, you shoot Tillie.”

Eve starts to lose it. “No, Nicky, don’t!”

“Unfortunately, that’s how shotguns work—big noise, big crater,” Yancy says in a calm expository tone.

Stripling is grinding his unshaven jaws, blinking the rain bubbles from his eyelashes. Which, the Beretta? It wasn’t designed to be aimed with one arm. Beefy as Nick is, the gun’s getting heavy. Slippery, too.

“Drop that goddamn dog,” he says to Yancy.

Tillie’s rose-petal tongue is lolling, Yancy holding her at center mass, patting her matted, spud-sized head. He matter-of-factly advises Nick to put down the gun, Nick snorting: Guy must be out of his mind.

“You really don’t want to kill this scrumptious little puppy,” says Yancy. “It would break your bride’s heart. Clumps of bloody fuzz all over the lawn?”

“I’ll buy her another one. This is not a problem.”

“You bastard!” Eve shouts, and jumps between her husband and the smart-ass restaurant inspector.

Which, Nick Stripling’s plan? All of a sudden it turns to shit.

Twenty-two

Tillie remembered him!

Yancy shouldn’t have been so surprised. Once he’d dated a veterinary assistant who told him that dogs never forget a person’s odor, even after one fleet sniff. She said the canine memory was headquartered in its nostrils, and this was as true for arctic wolves as it was for designer diva breeds. Still, with Stripling poised to blow his guts out, Yancy had been caught off guard when, in a show of improbable athleticism, Tillie bounded into his arms. He sentimentally accepted the animal’s forwardness as affection, possibly even gratitude for Yancy plucking her from shark-filled waters on his faux fly-fishing visit to Bannister Point.

For him now to employ Tillie as a shield against the loaded Beretta was understandably distressing to Eve, but not for a moment did Yancy believe Stripling would vaporize the family pet in order to kill him. It wasn’t a measure of compassion but rather the fear of domestic bedlam; Eve never would have forgiven Nick, and without her loyalty he couldn’t sustain the complicated artifice of his new life.

Still, instead of a dog Yancy would have preferred to be holding the Glock, which he’d left at home in Florida knowing the Bahamian Customs officials took a dour view of firearms in one’s luggage. Even with Tillie in his arms Yancy’s kneecaps remained vulnerable to a shotgun blast. The pup would be airborne before Yancy hit the ground, giving Stripling clear aim for a kill shot.

That option seemed to dawn on Nick just as his wife stepped in
front of Yancy and the dog. The span of her hips, worthy of Rubens, made it practically impossible for her husband to shoot around her. “Tell him to drop the gun,” Yancy said to Eve, “or I’ll pop poor Tillie’s head off.”

For drama he flexed his fingers around the stem-like neck of her pooch.

“He’s lying!” Stripling boomed.

“What do you care about her, anyway?” Eve cried. Then, spinning back to Yancy: “Don’t hurt her, please, she has a renal condition. Let’s talk this through.”

“You heard what I did to Dr. Clifford Witt, the noted dermatologist. It was all over the Internet.” Yancy wanted her to believe he was capable of blithe atrocities. “Eve, I’m going to ask one more time—where is Rosa?”

“Rosa’s fine. Maybe we can make a trade.”

“Shut your goddamn trap!” Stripling said to his wife, an unproductive approach.

She flipped him off, a robust salutation over one shoulder. Then she told Yancy that she’d lead him straight to Rosa if he freed her treasured companion.

“Only when I see Rosa alive,” Yancy countered. It was difficult to preserve a threatening countenance, as Tillie was now licking his knuckles.

Craning to see past his wife, Stripling swore wildly and proclaimed that Yancy was a lying cocksucker. Stripling was hollering to be heard over the wind, which in a matter of moments had accelerated to a gale that wobbled all of them. Yancy firmed his hug on the dog to keep her from sailing away. Eve was backlit by one of the floodlights, her reddish hair dancing like an electric mop; she cupped both hands binocular-style around her eyes, for protection. The rain beat down in gusting, horizontal lashes.

“Get out of the way!” Stripling bellowed at Eve.

“No, Nicky, we’re gonna do a trade!”

“The hell we are!”

Yancy wasn’t surprised that Stripling refused to go along with the hostage exchange. His thoughts shifted toward escape, knowing he
could outrun the lopsided mook. The shotgun had a limited range of lethality that wouldn’t be improved by the fierce weather conditions.

Yet Yancy hesitated to flee, thinking:
Once I get away from here, how do I save Rosa?
Most likely she was being confined somewhere inside the Striplings’ house.

If they hadn’t already killed her.

The opportunity to bolt was lost when Stripling, on the edge of rage, used the twin barrels of the Beretta to somewhat firmly prod his wife. She slipped on the wet grass and fell, the sight causing Tillie to begin yipping in dismay.

Stripling shouted his intentions to shoot Yancy’s legs off, at which point Yancy lowered the miniature dog from chest level to groin level. Nick’s expression never changed, even as he strained with his lone arm to keep the weapon level. He seemed fully committed to pulling the trigger, Tillie or no Tillie.

Meanwhile Eve was on her knees frantically clapping at the dog, imploring her to jump. The waterlogged lump began to wriggle and whine in Yancy’s arms.

“Oh fine,” he said, and he placed her on the ground.

Tillie faithfully scrambled into the emotional clinch of Eve, who shouted up at Yancy: “Thank you!”

Then, to her husband: “Okay, Nicky, now kill him!”

Among Yancy’s final regrets, the most unforgivable was allowing Rosa Campesino to meet alone with a pair of known murderers. She’d been so amped about going undercover like a real cop, so calm and radiantly sure of herself—still, he should have said forget it, baby, we’ll try something else. But he’d never learned to say no to the women in his life, even on those occasions when he was right—a fatal weakness, it turned out.

One lame, last stall for time: Yancy pointed at the dripping Beretta and yelled through sheets of rain: “Nick, I bet the shells got wet!”

“Let’s find out, asswipe.” The man looked unfazed, unworried.

Taking a breath, Yancy braced for the flash of the shotgun. He considered shutting his eyes, but that seemed like something a doomed monk would do. Yancy wasn’t so spiritual or serene; nothing about death appealed to him.

So he folded his arms, directed a necrotic glare at Stripling and said: “Fuck you, Stumpy.”

The response from Eve’s husband was a gummy grin that showcased flawless white veneers, top and bottom, doubtlessly paid for by the Medicare trust fund. As an honest restaurant inspector Yancy could never afford a smile so luminous, and he dolefully assumed this would be the last thing he ever saw—the ill-gotten, high-end dentition of his killer.

Next came a loud crack, though it wasn’t from the Beretta.

And it wasn’t Yancy who went down hard in the rain.

The Lipscombs had decided on real oak floors, a thrilling development for Evan Shook. He wrung a sweet price from an outfit in Deerfield Beach, the owner himself schlepping all the way to the house to measure the interior. Evan Shook let the construction crew take an early lunch, clearing the place for the flooring dealer and his helper. Evan Shook stood in the doorway smiling to himself because he knew the square footage so precisely that he’d already calculated his inflated surcharge to the Lipscombs.

A car he didn’t recognize pulled up in front. A broad-shouldered man in a dark suit got out and approached the house. Evan Shook hoped he wasn’t a new building inspector. The one he’d been dealing with for months was a very reasonable guy who, in exchange for two nights at the Delano and box seats at a Marlins game, had agreed to overlook the unlawful height of Evan Shook’s spec house and other flagrant code violations.

“My name is John Wesley Weiderman,” the visitor said. “I’m with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation.”

A dry handshake followed. Evan Shook couldn’t imagine what a lawman from the Midwest might be doing on Big Pine Key, on the unfinished brushed-marble doorstep of the soon-to-be estate of Ford and Jayne Lipscomb.

“I’d invite you inside,” Evan Shook said, “but, as you can see, it’s not quite finished.”

“Nice place,” said Agent John Wesley Weiderman. The temperature
outdoors was ninety-one degrees and he was sweating through his suit jacket. “I came here to ask if you’d seen your neighbor lately. Mr. Yancy.”

“Not for a couple days.” Evan Shook thinking:
Oh shit. What now?

“Are you two friends?” the agent asked.

“Actually, I don’t know him very well.” Evan Shook was tempted to say Yancy was a stoned flake, but trashing one cop to another cop could be dicey. The blue brotherhood and all that.

John Wesley Weiderman said, “I have reason to believe he might be in danger.”

“You’re joking. Danger from who?”

“A fugitive I’ve been hunting.”

Evan Shook felt a familiar tremor of apprehension. First wild dogs in the streets, now a murderous psychopath on the loose.

“Let’s chat in the Suburban,” he said to the lawman. “It’s got killer AC.”

The interior of the vehicle was quiet and cool. John Wesley Weiderman commented upon the ample leg room and the suppleness of the leather. He inquired about the gas mileage and seemed undaunted by the EPA estimates.

“Will you be driving north,” he asked Evan Shook, “if the hurricane comes?”

“Nah. We’ll have some rain and wind from it, no biggie. The Bahamas are getting clobbered, for sure.”

Evan Shook had been tracking Hurricane Françoise’s progress as relayed by the high-strung meteorologists on Miami TV. In the unlikely event that the storm made a hard westward turn toward South Florida, the spec house would have to be zippered up hastily. The fretful Lipscombs had been phoning Evan Shook every few hours seeking reassurance that the place wouldn’t be reduced from villa to slab.